Sunday, February 06, 2011

portrait - conversion to monochrome

although I prefer color photographs to monochrome, monochrome has its points. When I look at those two portraits of Natalia Bull, I find it hard to choose which one I prefer - it really depends on the purpose. Color one has more information in it and would look great in a color layout, monochrome is probably more suitable for printing out and hanging on a wall.

I don't have full photoshop, but photoshop elements once again proved to be an adequate tool for the purpose. To get the soft skin tones, I had a lot of red and very little of green and blue in the mix during the conversion. If it was a freckly child portrait and I wanted to emphasize the freckles, I would have done the opposite - lots of green, less red.

One consequence of this conversion if that lips were de-emphasized. There was a thin layer of pale gloss on them, and contrast with skin is even lower in monochrome. Funnily enough, fire-engine red lipstick would would go as pale, so if we repeat the session at some point and want a higher contrast, we'd need a colder tone with less red - plum shade will work.

Toning was done with gradient map layer.

Natalia Bull is zumba instructor, and we had a lot more colorful zumba session with her as well - you can find it here